By Staff
I never know from week to week what may inspire me or what I will choose to write about for this week's column.
Sometimes I run into someone at the grocery store and they encourage me, or sometimes someone calls me on the phone and they talk about their gardening experiences and their stirring conversations move me.
Maybe it's from a magazine and, in a flash, up pops an idea.
Or it could be from something I saw in my or someone else's garden. Who knows?
This leads me to this week's column, as we are all more than likely running out of gardening space.
We have space for only so many containers. We can't make any more room for new flowerbeds. The only space left is to grow up and go vertical.
Fast-growing vines can quickly cover arches, arbors, trellises, tuteurs, pergolas, fences and other garden structures.
They provide color, shade, privacy and can also act as a screen – all in a single season.
Vines, be they annual or be they perennial, so many from which to choose.
This year I tried the vine called hyacinth bean (dolichos lablab).
What an unusual climber. You don't see these very often.
They're a tender perennial (zone 9-10) grown as an annual (zone 3-8)
I found in my gardening experience these vines are very vigorous (can grow up to 30 feet tall; mine didn't, it only reached seven to eight feet tall), have sweet pea-like flower clusters changing from a light pink to a dark mauve, the flowers were not smothered by leaves or twinging vines, unlike other flowering vines (scarlet runner bean or morning glory), flowers are held out and above the solid green foliage on long, straight stems that are colored a rich purple-brown – a nice contrast to the green of the leaf foliage.
A very exotic-looking vine, the ornamental seed pods are a funny color, too – a dark brown, almost black, with a white-fringed edge.
I wouldn't eat the beans, either, as a seed catalog had this to say: "Warning, the dry seeds of this bean contain cyanogenic glucosides in toxic amounts.
"Asian cooks treat the seeds to remove the toxins, but unless you are very familiar with this process, it is best not to eat them."
Also, to get them to germinate (anywhere from three to 30 days), soak them in warm water for 24 hours.
They say they don't like to be transplanted, but I bought mine in little four-inch nursery pots and it did fine when I transplanted (but then again it's not really transplanted; its roots were not disturbed – not like being dug up from the ground).
If you don't want to wait for it to germinate, say maybe up to 30 days, then buy them at a greenhouse or nursery, like I did.
Source for the warning was found in a seed catalog from Pinetree Garden Seeds, P.O. Box 300, New Gloucester, ME 04260.
Source for greenhouse/gardens: Stover's, 4129 CR 352, Decatur (formerly Ritchie's Garden Greenery). If you like the unusual, they probably have it.
Owners and staff are very knowledgeable and friendly.
Say you have never been there, you must go. It's a real gardening treat. I have to go at least once and usually end up going more than that.